Analog telephone calls degraded with distance; digitizing communications allowed errors to be detected and corrected, leading to the Internet. Analog computations degraded with time; digitizing computing again allowed errors to be detected and corrected, leading to microprocessors and PCs. Manufacturing today remains analog; although the designs are digital, the processes are not. I will present emerging research on digitizing fabrication by coding the construction of functional materials, and explore its implications for programming the physical world.
Neil Gershenfeld, "The Third Digital Revolution" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP31), 2015, pp 1 - 1, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2015.31.1.art00001_1